‘No Fred, it’s alright. This … this is my husband.’
Bloody hell! Her husband! Of course he had known she had one. They had all been told at the factory of her soldier husband though no-one had ever seen him. Popped a ‘bun in the oven’ first, and then married her before going to France, they said, though Fred had his own thoughts on that tale which he kept to himself. This company had not been left in
her
direction for nothing, not in Fred Knowsley’s opinion, make what you will of it. Liked Meg Fraser, he did and this business was on its feet again, thanks to her – and the war, but he had seen her face open up like a flower in the sun when she spoke Martin Hunter’s name. She did the work of ten men and had even begun to talk of testing the ‘Wren II’ herself, saying she was as competent as Angus Munro to judge whether an aircraft was workable or not. Angus was keen to get over to France and do his bit as soon as a replacement could be found, and was teaching his employer not only how to fly the machine, but every damn nut and bolt and strut which held it together. She was often to be seen with her head in the engine and oil on her face, determined, it appeared, to follow in every footstep Martin Hunter had once taken.
Fred had gone, clearing his throat awkwardly for really the poor bugger looked dreadful! He just stood there, waiting for orders, or so Fred imagined, his khaki uniform crumpled, the poor quality of his overcoat evident in its creased and sagging coarseness. He had some sort of knapsack attached to his chest with a multitude of strapping. A helmet hung on it, dragging down his already bent shoulders. He wore puttees and a peaked cap, all drab and of a sameness with the thousands of other soldiers who could be seen at railway stations all over the country, but his buttons were bright with polish, and the badge on his cap and his shining boots were like wet black paint.
‘Tom,’ she said and for a timeless poignant moment they were children again, a lad and a lass working side by side in the cheerful companionship of youth and they smiled at one another in sweet remembrance.
‘Yes, it’s me, Meggie.’
‘But what … how on earth …?’
‘I’ve just come from …’ His face closed suddenly in that guarded way each soldier fresh from France, or indeed any battlefield of the war assumed, then it opened again and his lips moved across his white teeth in a tired smile. The anger and anguish of their last meeting, and the parting, seemed diminished somehow, made small and unworthy by what had happened to him in between and here he was, take him or leave him, his expression said.
‘I was up at … at “Hilltops”. They said you were here so I came to see you.’
‘To
see
me, Tom?’
‘It’s been a long time, Meggie. I wasn’t sure of my welcome.’
‘Oh Tom, “Hilltops” is your
home
!’ Her eyes shone through her sudden tears and she lifted her hands to him, to the scarred and battered ones he put out to her and as he stood there, quite ready to do whatever she asked of him, go back to France, take himself anywhere from her sight if she commanded it, her heart moved painfully with compassion for him. She had written a dozen letters to him, through the Army Council for she had no idea where he was, and she had assumed they had been sent on to him, and had received her army pay as his wife each week, but he had not written to her. Now he stood like a beaten child before her.
She put out her arms to him and he walked blindly into them.
He had bathed and changed into a pair of his old flannels worn with a woollen jumper for the night was cold, glad to be out of his uniform, she thought, and unwilling to talk of the three stripes which she had admired on his arm.
‘Sargeant now, Tom. Such quick promotion. You must be proud.’
‘No,’ and his eyes turned away from her, rejecting her and she knew then that there were certain areas of Tom Fraser’s life that must not be mentioned.
When he came diffidently into her sitting room she had her child in her arms.
Elizabeth Fraser was eight months old with skin like clotted cream and a cap of red gold curls which fluffed about her small skull in exactly the vivid way of her mother’s. She was strong and healthy and beautiful, already filled with an enormous sense of her own importance in this household where everybody doted on
her
and she turned her head from the bright beads which hung about her mother’s neck to look, unafraid, at Tom as he entered the room. Her eyes considered him, deep and brown and shaped in that certain way which Tom had seen in only one man. They were luminous, bright and lively, as his had been, inquisitive, willing to be friends, then she smiled showing half a dozen tiny white teeth in an expanse of pink and shining gum. She turned for a moment to her mother as though in delighted wonder at the appearance of this stranger, then put out a plump hand to him.
‘This is Beth, Tom …’ Meg was very evidently unsure of what to do next but the child decided for her. She struggled, her baby voice demanding something of her mother and Meg looked helplessly at Tom.
‘She is …’
‘What …?’
‘I think she wants to …’
‘Shall I …?’
‘If you sit down beside me on the settee.’
‘Here?’
And with a delightful and triumphant chortle of glee Beth Fraser, Martin Hunter’s daughter clambered from her mother’s knee on to that of the man who was to be her father. He held her awkwardly, his big hands round her body and her feet danced on his knee and she put out her hands to clasp his face. She grinned and tossed her small head quite flirtatiously and Tom Fraser saw Martin Hunter’s charm and his heart resisted for a moment. This was
his
child, when she should have been Tom’s. She was the child who had parted him from her mother and she was Martin Hunter’s child, then, suddenly sleepy, the little girl leaned against him and with perfect trust she took Tom Fraser’s heart into her own safekeeping.
They ate their simple meal with her at five-thirty in the afternoon since she was put to bed at six-thirty, Meg explained and this hour in her mother’s busy day belonged to her. Beth sat in the high chair and spoke continuously to her new friend, her eyes wide and satisfied with him, expecting nothing, demanding nothing of him but his smile and his hand. Meg saw the stiffness leave his shoulders and the strain slip away from his face as he watched her child, Martin’s child. He held her again in gentle arms for half an hour before the nursery fire, sitting in peace, the first he had known for over a year. He said nothing much, speaking
quietly
to the baby, resting his cheek against her lovely bright curls and when it was time to hand her over to Sally Flash, the capable young woman in whose care she was whilst Meg was working, he did so reluctantly.
He and Meg sat on, one on either side of the fire in the nursery, the fresh scent of the soap the nurse had used for the baby, the toys, the small clothes airing at the fender, soothing the sad core of Tom Fraser as nothing else could have done. Life was here, the new life of a child and it laid a balm on the wound which festered and bled inside him.
He seemed unable to talk, now that the child had gone.
‘How long have you got, Tom?’ Meg said half an hour later.
‘A week.’ His eyes were shuttered.
‘You’ll stay here … I mean …’ She smiled into his face, watching the quiet strength of it and the pain which would never, until this war finished, be gone, and the sense of refuge he had always given her, settled about her. ‘I didn’t mean that as it sounded, as though you were a guest. The hotel … I am to close it down until the war ends … I cannot manage it and run the factories, so there are no visitors, but it belongs to you, if you want it, as much as it does to me. This is my home, and yours too. Beth … she is … the servants … except Annie … believe she is … your child, Tom. The eyes … they never really knew … well … she is like me and … dear God, Tom, don’t let me stumble through this by myself. You know what I am saying. Spend Christmas, here in your own home with your family. There, is that plain enough for you?’
She leaned forward and took his hands between her own, glad to feel the relaxed way they closed about hers.
‘Tom … can we speak of it now? It has to be said, lad. We cannot let it … stand between us, not if we are to … to make a life. We are husband and wife, Tom, like it or not and Beth is
our
child. She was not fathered by you but … sweet Jesus, I will not hide his name away as though it was shameful. Martin …
our
Martin, Tom, yours and mine, for he belonged to us both, is the father of that child you have nursed and … and he is … dead, Tom. I have almost accepted it. It is slow in coming but I have … undertaken it. It is still … painful and I will not deceive you, I will always love him. Just as
you
will, think what you like. We cannot change it, Tom, nor can we forget it, or
him
. He has left a part of him in Beth. The three of us, remember what Mrs
Whitley
used to call us? Well, we are still three because Martin lives on in Beth.’
She was weeping now, the tears sliding helplessly down her cheeks on to their linked hands. She bent her head to them, anguished again in her loss and Tom Fraser, who had seen what loss and pain did to a man knew he could no longer blame this woman, or the man she loved.
‘Meg.’
‘I miss him so much, Tom.’
‘Meg, look at me.’
She raised her head and saw his compassion and the love he still had for her and when he stood and took her in his arms she did not resist. She led him to her bedroom and in the depths of her soft bed she loved Tom Fraser, her husband, giving him at last what he needed from her. The rounded curves and hollows of her body soothed and enfolded him. The sweet fragrance of her skin, the feel of life and warmth in her, of complete and undamaged flesh and bone and skin and the love in her eyes which shone just for
him
, bound him to her with strong and tender chains. She had come to terms with her grief, her heartache for the loss of the man she loved. The sweetness, so nearly soured, of this man she held, filled her empty heart and his gentleness and patience gave her something she had never before known. She loved him. She had always loved him and he gave her a peace that night she had thought lost to her when Martin had died. He made love to her, lovingly, slowly, as though he savoured a meal for which he had hungered but never thought to be allowed, exploring her body with hands and mouth and she knew a quiet pleasure when he trembled in her arms as his masculine need came at last to fulfilment.
They spent the five remaining days with their child and in their renewed love and friendship. They took long, rambling walks on the moor Tom loved. He strapped the child on his back and she put her baby fingers in his bright cap of curls and her delighted laughter rose up into the still, winter air and when he lifted her down and cradled her in his arms the bond began to bud and strengthen, even then, between them, and Meg gave thanks. The pale sun and the exercise put colour into his thin face and his eyes became again the vivid blue of his youth as he played with
his
child and his laughter blended with the music of the breeze.
Annie cooked him Lancashire hot-pot with dumplings in it, and apple pie and cream from his own orchard and his own cow. She stuffed him with creamy rice pudding and the syllabub Meg had taught her to make, overflowing with chocolate and cream and vanilla. Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with a mountain of fluffy potatoes and gravy made from the juice of the meats, and every fattening dish she could get into him since he was as thin as a pipe cleaner, she said, and it was her quiet intention to put a few pounds on him before he returned to France.
He spent hours in the garden in silent, peace-drenched solitude, just looking at the things he had planted a hundred years ago before the world had gone mad, touching the rough bark of a tree or the shiny surface of a leaf, drawing in the strength and continuity of the land he loved. He and Will, Annie’s son, who had come up from Great Merrydown to take care of it all, and the boy – since Albert was too old now, he complained, for such a big place – sat in almost total speechlessness, sharing a pipe of tobacco, staring out across the garden and beyond to the lovely perfect stillness of the Gorge, and his healing contact with the earth he loved and the quiet strength of the man who watched over it for him while he was away, showed in the relaxed way he could stand, and walk and sit, without constantly looking over his shoulder.
Meg watched him and prayed that the strength in him would continue when he had left this place he loved and which had put it there. They healed
one another
those few days, sharing the small joys of the Christmas festivity, the sweet and simple pleasure of the baby and in their bed at night they renewed the faith and trust that when the time came and the war was ended they would live this life, these few days, again and again and again.
So they said goodbye, kissed and said goodbye and Meg Fraser held her child in her arms that night and prayed that Tom Fraser would come home to her again. To the life she had re-built for them at ‘Hilltops’. It was almost a year now since the last frightening episode in which the dog had died and in all that time she had heard no more of, or from, the man she was completely convinced had been behind all the events; the bar-room fire, the failure of the brakes in the motor car and finally the poisoning of the veal and the death of the dog. It seemed too much of a coincidence that all three were unconnected but if he had arranged them all why had he not come forward in some way to let her
know
of it and to gloat about it. After the dog’s death she had been badly frightened and tempted to go to the police but she had no concrete evidence beyond her own suspicions and what could they do anyway, she had agonised? She had nearly told Tom in their new found relationship but he had been so … so empty … so frail almost that she had been reluctant to add to the burden his already sagging shoulders carried.